LastPass is a free, feature-rich password manager and Web form filler. It has almost every software feature found in any competitor, plus some unique features of its own. Numerous mobility options mean you can use it wherever you are.

Back in the day, you couldn't get into a speakeasy without saying "Swordfish" to the guy at the door. Imagine if you had to remember a password for every store on Main Street! That's what it's like on the Internet these days. Luckily, you can choose from a wide variety of tools to help manage this plethora of passwords. Some just manage passwords, some also fill in Web forms, some can go portable on a USB key, and some can print out your collected passwords. My new favorite is LastPass 1.50, which offers just about every feature found in any of its competition at an attractive pricefree!

One big difference between LastPass and the rest is that it stores your form-fill and password data online. RoboForm Pro 6.3 will eventually have a similar feature, but it's still in beta. On the plus side, that means you can access your data from any browser. On the worrisome side, that means that this sensitive data is stored on somebody else's server. LastPass goes to great lengths to explain why this is safe: While your data is in storage and during transmission across the Web, it remains protected by 256-bit AES encryption. The data gets decrypted only on your local system, using a strong master password that only you know. This is a small company that's taking on more established vendors. What if they don't survive? What if new-found popularity overloads their servers so you can't connect with your data? Don't worry. If the servers are offline you won't be able to add or edit login data, but your local copy of LastPass keeps its own cached copy of the encrypted data.

If you forget the master password, LastPass can't recover your data. All you can do in that case is wipe out your account and start over. If thugs break in and steal the LastPass servers, they won't be able to use your encrypted data because they don't have the password. I've looked over the description of how the company protects your data and concluded that this method is no more risky than using an online backup system. Just make sure your master password is a strong one that nobody will guess.

Getting Started

As soon as you start to install it, LastPass goes to work. If you don't already have an account, LastPass sets one up for you. The account creation screen includes a spot to define your master password, with a built-in password strength meter and a link to get help creating a strong password. You also have to check a box indicating you understand that your log-in data, encrypted so nobody but you can read it, will be stored online by LastPass.

During the install process, LastPass imports any passwords it can from Internet Explorer and Firefox. Storage for these passwords is clearly not secure: If LastPass could grab them, so could a malicious program. So LastPass offers to store them in its password vault and delete the insecurely stored originals from the browsers. Large Software Password Manager 1.0 also imports these non-secure passwords, and the newest version of Identity Safe (a feature of Norton 360 version 3.0 and Norton Internet Security 2009) imports from IE but not Firefox.

LastPass next invites you to enter personal data for one or more profiles. This includes physical address, phone and e-mail contact info, credit cards, and more. You can fill as much or as little as you like and come back to edit this data at any time. Choose a couple of simple options like whether or not to log out of LastPass when you close your browser, and whether to make the LastPass Vault your home page, and you're done. In Internet Explorer and Firefox, LastPass appears as a button on the menu bar. Just click the button to log in to LastPass or invoke its various features.Next: Saving Passwords

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